Let me be baroque in death as I’ve been practical in life.
Let six black-plumed stallions draw the black-gloss carriage
wherein my black-gloss casket rests upon a maple plinth
festooned with lilies – outrageously frilled and huge white
lilies exploding from every crevice, their syrupy
musk clagging the air for miles around. Let us halt all
deliveries. Let the golden trim of the vast black wheels
flash and wink as we roll by, let the mourners’ wails fly
above the roofs of inappropriately mundane semis
where only grandpa doesn’t doubt his seeing eyes.
Let the teenagers of the parish be absolved from Maths
and History and PE, and instead beat timpani, their pale
necks bowed to the heavy instruments, the beat
recalling the slow-time march of an invading army,
while out in front a lone flautist in velvet drapes
presages our coming with tones as dissonant and forsaken
as a freight train horn petitioning the night. Afterwards,
let there be rain: sudden and catastrophic rain
for a thousand days, washing all the pavements clean.
